Fight over Jasper County project goes on

COLUMBIA — A controversial wetlands project in Jasper County has collected a series of wins, but the commercial plan isn’t a done deal.

A Florida businessman who intends to turn hundreds of acres of freshwater wetlands into saltwater said the project is needed for future South Carolina development.

This month state regulators upheld a state permit sought by Murphy McLean, president of South Coast Mitigation Group, to create a “bank” of credits. The credits can be bought and sold to compensate for harming wetlands in the course of other development.

“It’s actually a model bank, exactly what the program is designed for,” said McLean, based out of the north Florida town of Wellborn, on Thursday.

“We’re delighted that they agreed with permitting it,” he said, referring to a favorable decision in December by coastal regulators of the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has also determined that the project may operate as a mitigation bank.

The project, which McLean said restores the wetlands to its original saltwater state and creates a conservation easement, has also worried some state and federal environmental regulators.

McLean said he was surprised by the resistance from some, including the S.C. Department of Natural Resources.

“They didn’t want it for reasons that we think are political,” he said. “I won’t go there, but there were certain things that we found that we didn’t agree with.”

McLean was also skeptical about the Coastal Conservation League’s opposition.

“We think there are some private agendas going on,” he said.

McLean said the bank he hopes to create will allow people, companies, organizations, governments, and military installations along South Carolina’s coast to purchase credits as a way to offset the environmental impacts of their own projects.

Those might include port-related work or the development of a roadway or a natural gas line.

The developer has spent three years trying to establish a compensatory wetlands mitigation bank. It’s planned for an area west of U.S. 17, before the Talmadge Bridge over the Back River.

In August, DNR argued against converting the 700-acre site, which for 200 years was a freshwater impounded wetland, into saltwater wetlands.

In a letter to the the corps, DNR said McLean’s project would create more acreage that’s of less value to important aquatic, migratory and endangered species.

Under the proposal, 2,300-feet of dike would be removed to release the tide waters. More than 5,000 cubic yards of fill material would be discharged there, according to records.

That’s a problem, said DNR.

The natural resources agency warned of “the potential to release a significant amount of contaminants,” which it said are bound in sediments of the Savannah River, considered by some to be the nation’s fourth most polluted.

Marsh soils in the lower Savannah River estuary are known to have hazardous contaminants, said DNR, including radioactive pollutants, metals, petroleum hydrocarbons, cyanide, pesticides, and others.

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service also said it “strongly discourages” creating the proposed mitigation bank. In May, it warned that 485 acres of “increasingly rare” freshwater impoundments will be “irretrievably lost.”

The environmental group cited the government agencies’ objections and called South Coast Mitigation Group’s application claims “highly misleading.”

On Thursday, Travis Hughes, a regulatory deputy for the Charleston District of corps, declined to comment on the specific charges leveled by agencies that oppose the project.

He said federal officials are still reviewing and addressing the comments they received. A permit to allow the physical site work, such as removing the dikes, has yet to be issued.

The corps leads a consortium of government agencies, including DHEC, which meets to consider applications to create mitigation banks.

Of South Carolina’s 17 mitigation banks, all but two are freshwater, according to Carolyn Boltin-Kelly, deputy director for DHEC’s Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management. Her office granted McLean a permit in December, which the state board upheld this month.

She said different agencies promote different protection priorities.

“But our goal for the agency is not to manage for one particular species,” she said. “We’re looking at all the coastal resources.”

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